Friday, February 22, 2008

It's Friday afternoon and I'm just waiting for Craig to pick me up and then we're heading to Kirk's for the 10th annual Wonderboy.

It's been a tiring week. Sunday was the dinner with Sue and Nadine. Tuesday I was at the Leafs game (2nd row in the reds). Wednesday I was at the Sabres game at HSBC arena. We had really good seats, 4th row at the blue line. It's the closest seats I've had for a professional sport. The Sabres won in OT. I was hoping for a shoot-out, because when you're that close, the glass above the boards gets in the way and you can't see the other end of the rink (which is where Buffalo scored two to tie, and then the OT goal).

Last night was hockey, which we lost 3-1. I came very close to scoring on a rebound. I had a wide open net at an angle and actually got the shot on net, but the goalie stuck up his glove and caught it. I got the assist on Craig's goal. It was good to get out skating, as I hadn't played a sport since last Wednesday.

We made homemade pizzas last Saturday, using Heather's sister Jen's recipe for dough. The dough came out really well! I was tossing it around in the air like in the movies (or any pizza place). Next time I'll roll it a bit thinner though, as it rises (who knew!).

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

(Just having some leftover soup before heading to bed.)

We had Nadine and Sue over for dinner on Sunday, what with Monday being a new holiday and all. We can't have the dinner on a school night because there's five courses and we have a bottle of wine with each course.

Dinner turned out really well. I started with an amuse bouche of a mussel in the half shell, with a jerk / white wine sauce with a slice of shiitake, cilantro and orange zest. Served with a pinot gris.

Next Sue had spent a couple days making a mushroom barley soup, with a beef stock from scratch. It was excellent. It was paired with a pinot noir.

I made the pasta course, the porcini / pimento / basil risotto with the merlot that we had made before.

Sue had the main, a beef tenderloin topped with a wasabi / parsley / yogurt sauce, served with portabello, asparagus and mixed greens. Top marks for presentation. Matched with a bourgogne. Mmmm.

Finally for dessert I made up some creme brullee, served with a chai liqueur.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Just had some of the new flavours of bonbons from js bonbons (I bought Heather the Big Box of Love for our traditional Valentine's Day dessert). They are amazing. Usually we have two bonbons after dinner, but tonight we had five! In order of consumption:

1. Clementine and fennel -- first taste of citrus, then white chocolate and only at the end a taste of fennel. Mmmm.

5. Peanut Butter -- very good, but too close to the flavours of Reese's Pieces

We decided to document just for next time. There are a few more new flavours on their website that we need to buy after we finish the Big Box of Love, e.g. Chipotle Sesame with Lime, and Ginger Cardamom Caramel.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Heather and I had a really good dinner on Monday night. I was looking for new fish recipes, because I was getting tired of planked salmon. I was at Loblaws during lunch (buying stuff to make a sandwich), and wrote down the fish selection so I could surf for recipes. ("wrote" as in made a note in my BlackBerry). The choices were monkfish, basa, tilapia, nile perch, boston blue and ocean perch. I've tried a couple of these in restaurants but never at home.

Found a recipe for tilapia that sounded good. After work stopped by the Vintages LCBO and the product consultant (who reminded me of Greg from CSI) recommended a Veramonte sauvignon blanc. We really like the cabernet sauvignon from Veramonte, so I was hoping for big things.

Unfortunately Loblaws had sold out of tilapia. I already had a wine that matched the recipe, so bought basa which the fishmonger had recommended as a replacement. (It's some sort of catfish). The recipe was really good, and the wine went well too!

We lost our hockey game on Thursday 3-0. I had two or three good chances to score, and set up Craig a couple times with good passes. As the zero in our score attests, none of chances went in the net. The other team played a very good positional game, passing the puck around like a team. After we went for pizza and a beer, but the pizza oven is still broken and so we had to settle for wings and fries. The only good thing of the night was that I finally got the best parking spot at the arena!

Leo (the neighbourhood cat) made an appearance last week after being AWOL for a few weeks. It looked like he had eaten well during his vacation. He's been back a couple times since.

Our Sunday Ultimate starts up this weekend, finally. Playing sports on Wednesday-Thursday left a big gap over the rest of the week. We're playing out of Sportsworld (at the Docks), and at BMO Field (the home of the Toronto FC).

Yesterday at work, David Holland (CFO of Torstar) had invited the IT senior management to lunch in the Atkinson Room at One Yonge. (There's seven directors including me, we report to the CIO, who reports to the CFO). It was an opporunity for David to meet us (we're brand new as a team), and for us to meet David and Prichard. The Atkinson Room is on the 6th floor at One Yonge, and is a nice dining room with various pictures and portraits of Joseph Atkinson. There's a framed internal memo from Atkinson, dated 1940, to future executives at the Star with four points (loosely quoted from my memory):

o what ought to be done?o how do we do it?o who needs to do it?o is it done?

Lunch was quite formal, with cloth napkins and the like. The appetizer was tomato and bocconcini with fresh basil; main was a chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms with grilled vegetables and new potatoes; dessert was three flavours of sorbet with fresh berries. David gave a brief welcome, and then we spent the rest of lunch each person giving a 5 - 10 minute history of themselves. Prichard was held up in other meetings and dropped in to say hello, shake everyone's hand and give us a welcome. It gave a good message that the upper executives supported IT.

Well I am going to work a bit on the basement today, insulating a couple spots. The rubber strip on the bottom of the shower door is cracking and needs to be replaced as well, so I'll have a quick walk over to Home Depot at some point.